


Soldier On

by Anzie (anzie)



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: A study in character, Alternate Universe - Human, Bucky/Loki if you squint, Hitman AU, I feel like all my fics need to just be tagged with Odin's A+ Parenting, Loki Gives A Fuck, Loki Needs a Hug, M/M, Odin's A+ Parenting, Other, Thanos is a codename, Thor is in a coma and Loki doesn't like it, Warning: Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 16:50:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7276102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anzie/pseuds/Anzie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“Your friend has a terrible smoking habit, I imagine. The rooftop is a wonderful place to cut some years from your life, is it not? Cigarettes, pills, a date with the ground; the only true difference is that one has the ability to kill… oh, almost instantaneously. Depending, of course, on the result.”</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soldier On

**Author's Note:**

> a.k.a. I'm trying to better characterize Bucky and Loki for my future fics. It's horribly unbeta'd, so my many, many apologies.

City lights catch and fracture in his eyes, shooting forwards like thousand tiny suns branding themselves in his aching brain. On the edge of the world, seated on the ledge at the roof of his building, Loki just squints back at the lights with his sharp chin tucked in the groove between his knees. Held like an offering to heaven, the weight of three little white pills might be just enough to tip him over the ledge; with his thumb, Loki rolls one in his palm.

It would just be one more, a small shot of chemically-induced happiness to get him through. The one he’d taken earlier had little effect on him but to heighten his desire for something _more_ , be it adrenaline or dopamine or whatever exists in his own fucked head. His muscles tremble unbidden, and the tiny pills shiver excitedly in his palm. Taking a deep breath, Loki picks one up and sits it on the tip of his tongue. Closing his eyes slowly, he imagines the chemicals entering his bloodstream, lighting up his head like the sun.

Thor comes, unbidden, into his mind – but it is not the brother he remembers in his youth, no. The Thor he sees lies still barely alive, surrounded by machines on machines struggling to keep his heart beating in Loki’s useless, childish hope that he will awaken even when his own professional eye recognizes the handiwork of another trained murderer; his heart contracts, hurts, and Loki digs the heels of his palms in his eyes to remind himself to _breathe_.

His phone chirps from its hiding place in his suit jacket, and Loki breathes in, breathes out before picking the device up. It’s a clipped message from Sif, demanding to know where the hell he is. Loki’s lip curls in distaste; his last memory of _her_ was of her anger upon his inebriated arrival to his parents’ funeral. _“Just because you hate your family doesn’t mean you get to not give a fuck about losing them. You don’t get to be a drunken asshole at their funeral. They_ raised _you!_ ”

Loki thinks he might have hit her, but his memories are hazy. He remembers her fist connecting to his jaw, though, very well, and the parting shot she left him bleeding with. _“No wonder they didn’t care to look for you.”_

The phone chirps again. This time it’s Freyja, her gentle words of condolence doing nothing to soothe the ache in his chest. He lingers over the final words, offering him solace should he need someone – but really, who wants to soothe someone like _him_? Loki doesn’t delude himself – he’s a killer, a monster; Odin knew this and Thor knew this, and so did Odin’s enemies. Even knowing this, the former two had kept him around like a pet too stupid to run away until running away was the only mistake he could have made.

Releasing a broken little sound, Loki flings the phone as far away from himself as he possibly can. He doesn’t stop to see where it lands, burying his face in his hands. _Stupid_. He was so _stupid_ to believe that he alone drew the threat close.

If he’s honest with himself, he wouldn’t have had the courage if Odin had not thrown him to the curb himself. By then, with the failed mission and a threat against his own life looming over him, Loki took to the darkness and prayed that the man calling himself ‘ _Thanos’_ would never find him.

He should have known that Thanos is nothing if not intelligent.

_Ain’t another woman that can take us from my-_

The music startles Loki enough that he almost slips off the edge then and there, before he’s ready. Head turning left and right to locate the source, Loki slowly reaches over his jacket to where the ringing phone lay facedown in the concrete, a deep crack lanced across its screen. There’s no picture, but the caller was named _Queen Elsa_.

Taking a deep breath, Loki swipes the answer button and holds the phone up to his ear.

“Hey, Barton – Nat said if I didn’t call you’d forget the keg, so don’t fucking forget the keg, ya dick.” The voice with its heavy Brooklyn accent sounds cheery despite the insult cavalierly attached to the end of the man’s message; Loki has to press the phone closer to his ear to catch the message properly. He hears a woman’s laugh over the noisy chatter and heavy music from the other end, and then the same voice says, “You there? Clint?”

“This is not Clint,” Loki responds, drawl almost lazy even though his body tenses to stop him from falling prematurely, tenses as he prepares himself to hear a carefully worded threat from the other end. He watches the cars rush by between his feet. “But if I meet him, I will be sure to pass your message. Don’t count on it, though; I doubt I will remember much from the morgue.”

A pause, and the noise from the other line fades slightly; Loki imagines a faceless stranger prowling from his party to a quieter section in a distant club. “Who is this?” The man sounds wary instead of hostile, and that answer tells Loki all he needs to know about who this man is. Unimportant.

_A liar,_ Loki wants to say. _A monster._ “Nobody.”

“Okay, Nobody. How the hell did you come by Clint’s phone?”

“Found it.”

“Where?”

Loki reaches out with his free hand to pluck a stone-cold cigarette next to him, letting it sit with the remaining two pills still in his palm. “Your friend has a terrible smoking habit, I imagine. The rooftop _is_ a wonderful place to cut some years from your life, is it not? Cigarettes, pills, a date with the ground; the only true difference is that one has the ability to kill… oh, almost instantaneously. Depending, of course, on the result.”

“The result?” The voice sounds cautious, almost hesitant; if Loki had the desire to laugh, he would.

“Of one’s choice. To take the other two pills,” Loki says, bringing them to eye level, “Or to practice tight-rope walking across the ledge.” There’s a soft intake of breath that Loki thinks he imagines, so he continues, “One of those two sounds a little more romantic, don’t you think?”

“Shit,” is the only response he gets. Loki hums.

“I am having quite a difficult time choosing, in truth.” He tips his head back a little. “Perhaps it is well that you called.”

“Yeah, because everyone wants to play God, Nobody. Fuck. Where the hell are you? Give me an address.” Loki doesn’t respond, listening instead as the man speaks to someone on his end of the line. “Sorry, Stevie, I’ll be back okay, I gotta do something, it’s important. I’ll be back.” His voice becomes clearer. “You still there, Nobody?”

“Quite,” Loki murmurs.

“Give me your address.”

A beatific smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, Loki tells the stranger his address, and says, “Am I important?”

“What?”

Pretending not to have heard, Loki continues, “Or am I an errand?” The city lights are turning into spinning stars, dancing in his eyes to the dying beat of the song over the line. There’s an incoherent splutter over the phone, and Loki laughs – dark, bitter, like coffee. “It is not the worse I have been called,” he says as the stars spin and spin and spin.

The man takes a moment to recover. “Yeah? Do you want me to call you Nobody, Important or Errand?”

“Loki,” Loki says.

“Bless you.”

“That’s my name,” Loki says, a touch insulted. He closes his eyes to the flashing lights.

“Oh. Fuck. Well, I’m Bucky.”

He cracks open his eyes in surprise. “What manner of a name is _that_?”

Bucky releases a short laugh into Loki’s ear, amusement coloring his voice when he says, “Could ask you the same question, _Loki_. You must’ve been one helluva troublemaker as a baby to be named after the God of Mischief.” Lightly, he adds, “What’d you do, keep your parents up all night?”

Loki’s throat closes up.

“Loki? Are you still there?” A honk sounds from Bucky’s end of the phone, and he yells, “Shit, sorry! Shit, fuck – Loki?”

“They are dead,” Loki says dully. A hot tear burns on its way to the floor as he focuses on the street below. The cars have been given a reprieve from their headlong rush to nowhere, but the people pass in droves. “As is my brother. They are all dead, or as good as.”

Silence crosses the line, and then Bucky whispers, “God, I’m sorry.”

“’Tis not your fault.” The fault lay – as always – with him; a miscalculation on his part cost him more than he was willing to admit to before. He wears regret like a tattered shirt with too much meaning for him to throw it out, his mouth a graveyard of words he could’ve should’ve said to them while they still lived. “To be truthful, I did not think far beyond my own survival.” Did not know, in fact, the price of his life equaled the cost of the ones he failed to love.

“Hey,” Bucky says quietly. “I don’t know you, okay, but I don’t think it was your fault. Yeah? Shit happens. Sometimes to the people we least expect it to, but… we can’t keep looking back on it. It’s not worth that much attention.”

Loki sniffles quietly, and whispers, “You have a very nice voice.”

There’s a small, surprised laugh. “Thanks, you’re not too bad yourself, Cute Accent. So, hey, what do you do? Your job?”

“I worked for my father.” The word, for its lack of use on Loki’s lips, flowed far easier than he ever imagined. “I… was a private contractor for other companies.” Half the truth was much easier than speaking a lie Loki knows he would never believe himself.

“Cool. So you travel a lot?”

“On the occasion the job takes me abroad.” Loki hugs his knees tighter with one hand, the pills crushed now in his palm. Listlessly, he says, “I suppose I am required to take Father’s place.”

“Yeah? You want to?”

Loki pictures Odin, remembers his own strict childhood. “Once. But no longer.” Frigga’s delicate handwriting comes to mind, and Loki quotes softly, “I cannot live the way he has lived, and I have lost too much of my soul to his whims.” _But I do what I must for my beloved sons, my dear Loki. I am glad you took your chance to leave the business. I miss you greatly, but I am glad you are no longer weighed down with the burden of being your father’s son. I will love you, forever and always._

_Stay safe, my dear Loki._

“She told me to leave,” Loki breathes. “And I left, and then they are dead because of me.”

There’s a soft exhale on the other line, and then it goes dead. Loki startles at the sudden sound, eyes flying open, throat closing at the thought of having pushed yet another soul away; his gaze drops to the lit screen that displayed the battery at five percent.

Despair hits him like a sudden wave, and Loki is prepared to drop the phone over the edge, and himself with it, when a voice behind him says, “Turn around, idiot.”

Loki turns around.

Bucky is not the person Loki imagined him to be. He is not blond, or short, or scrawny, and he doesn’t wear glasses. Tall and muscular even under the black leather jacket, Bucky has chin-length dark brown hair tucked behind his ears and a cleft in his chin. The gravity of his gaze speaks of someone who has seen much more than a man entering his thirties should know.

Loki swallows, words meeting a premature end on his tongue.

Bucky moves closer, shrugging out of his jacket to reveal a plain white tee and – and Loki’s gaze trails after the sight – a metal arm that gleams in the distant streetlights. If Bucky catches his surprise, the other man says nothing about it. “Nice view,” he says, tilting his head to indicate the city skyline. “You ready?”

“What?” Loki stares at him, thrown for a loop. Bucky raises an eyebrow at him.

“You, me, a date with the ground? Isn’t that what you invited me for?” His tone is far too light for someone agreeing to attempt suicide with him, and Loki shakes his head slowly, bewildered.

“No, not for you, no.” Not another life taken on his account.

Bucky’s lips curve, eyes searching Loki’s face. Whatever he sees there deepens the dimple in his cheek when he says, “Yeah, that’s not for you either. You’re way too smart for that.” Something cool curves around Loki’s wrist, and he looks down to see Bucky’s metal hand sitting in stark contrast against his own pale skin. “Lemme see what you have in your hand.”

Reluctantly, Loki’s fingers uncurl to show Bucky the remains of the two pills. The other man carelessly sweeps them from his palm, and Loki follows their movement as they tumble off the edge of the building and out of sight.

“That’s my choice for you,” Bucky says quietly. “Soldier on, Loki.” The hand hasn’t moved from his wrist, and Loki meets the stranger’s empathetic gaze. “Soldier on.”

**Author's Note:**

> Shit, this is terrible.
> 
> In my defense, the working title for this fic was 'lmao'.
> 
> On the bright side, I should be better at writing them now?


End file.
